


What it's Like

by kriadydragon



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Gen Fic, Haven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-24
Updated: 2011-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-21 17:05:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriadydragon/pseuds/kriadydragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what it's like not to feel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What it's Like

People like to ask me what it's like not to feel. Duke will ask “So how does it feel, not feeling?” because he's an asshole. Everyone else, they try to be polite about it. They'll cringe, sometimes wince the way people will when they've accidentally stepped on your foot or bumped into you too hard. Except when people bump into me, I only know it because suddenly I'm looking in a whole new direction.

I tell people a lot of things, that it's like I'm caught in a really vivid dream, or floating. Like I'm not really here or not really supposed to be here. I feel like I should be able to move through walls.

They say, “it must be nice not to have to put up with pain.” I want to answer, “I would love to feel pain.” Instead, I don't say anything. I'm more than enough of a freak. No reason to make them think I'm mentally unstable.

But, as the saying goes, walk a mile in my shoes. Any feeling would be a good feeling, even the ones that hurt like hell. People might respond, “You say that now, but wait until you actually hurt.” Except there was a time when I did feel, when I did hurt, and I loved every second of it.

There's a lot to being numb than just a guy who keeps going even with a bullet in his shoulder. There's a lot of precautions I have to take, because I'm numb, not dead. My nerves endings may be useless but my body still presses on, still takes damage, still runs the risk of dying and if that happened, I wouldn't be aware of it until I was dead.

I keep to a lot of schedules. No way am I going to go into them all. But if you want an example, take this one: I gotta make sure I eat. Not knowing when you're hungry, it makes it easy to keep going, to forget that it's lunch time or dinner time or, if I have to take off the moment I get out of bed, breakfast. I've done it before, more than once – gone whole days without eating, then wondering why the hell the world kept spinning and why I can't seem to walk in a straight line. One time, I passed out, and woke up in a hospital bed with a tube in my arm.

My dad would reprimand me in his own special way. “It's why your so damn skinny,” or “This better not be because you think you're getting fat.”

So I've set my watch to beep on the hour when most people who know they're hungry would eat. I don't always get to it right away, but I do eventually get to it.

I'm pretty sure my medical insurance would love nothing more than to drop me. I go to the doctor. A lot. I have to, because for all I know that massive bruise could be internal bleeding or that cut that refuses to heal could be infected. I don't go for every single solitary hurt I get – not if I can help it. But I have to go for the major stuff, like when I slammed into that shelving after Audrey tapped on that drawing of me. The moment everything was said and done and the town was no longer in danger of being demolished, I went for X-rays. I didn't think I needed them – I'd checked myself, I always do, and nothing was so severely broken it gave – but I'd cracked two ribs. Even if it's not a big deal for me, I need to be aware of them, to be careful. Cracked ribs can become broken, broken could puncture a lung. That's the kind of crap I need to worry about.

Needless to say, I've got a lot of scars. Not a disturbing amount, but more than I probably should have if I'd been aware of the injury in the first place. Most of them are on my bones, with a couple of impressive ones on my skin. Stories, people say. Scars tell stories. Problem is, I don't remember getting most of them. Makes me glad I wasn't a military brat, having to move around, to explain why I have so many scars, to say over and over and over that, no, I'm not being abused. But because I wouldn't be able to tell them where I got those scars, they wouldn't have believed me.

Getting sick is weird, because it means making sure I do the things that anyone else would do naturally. My body is pretty good at handling itself but, sometimes, without the ability to know how nauseas I am or how congested my lungs are, it needs help. I puke just fine, but I never see it coming. I have to remember to cough, sometimes. I'll cough without having to force it if my lungs get so congested I can hardly breathe, but that runs the risk of leading to pneumonia. So I cough and spit even when there's nothing at the moment to cough and spit. I have to be careful with that, too. I've rubbed my throat so raw coughing that I've coughed up blood.

Duke often asks me, because he's an asshole, how I even know that I'm alive. I don't answer because it's none of his damn business. I don't tell him that I sleep on my stomach, with my chest pressed to the bed, so that I can hear my heart beat through the pillow. I know it's pounding when I hear my blood roar through my ears, see blood stains my clothes, smell it, taste it if it gets in my mouth. I get sick and dizzy and suffocate when I don't get enough air. I don't feel my lungs expand, but I know it's happening. I still get the satisfaction and relief of oxygen feeding my body. I can't feel the food in my mouth, but the flavors are there. It's like how blind people will develop great hearing, or deaf people better sight. The body adapts, adjusts. I'm no different. I don't feel it, but I know it's happening. I see, I hear, I taste, so I know I'm alive.

That's what it's like for me. What it's like not to feel.


End file.
